Milsap, is lice estab­after-dinner rd Ways, of his mur­

had a son, a s still disap­ecretary, lint, and ectives that casionally.

e on the desk. MURDERER

:he sides or

)u mean.

llHis wife

hey found ) the arrest.

15

COLLOQUY

Webster I s Dictionary defines colloquy as mutual discourse. Read­e rs a re encouraged to submit additions, cor rections and comments about earlie l" article s appear ing in Word Ways. Comments rece ived up to a month prior to publication of an issue will appear in that issue.

The sto ry in the August 1981 Kickshaws about the lady occupying room lettel" B reminded William Sunners of his school-teaching days when he passed out assignment sheets identified by letters followed by numbers, such as A-5 and C-8. Whenever a student approached and asked for the sheet labeled B- 5, he would admonish him in l"apidly- spoken wo rds II Always finish B-4 before B_5" . Usually it was necessary to repeat this message slowly while pointing to the appropriate sheets before the student realized what had been said.

JeU Grant enjoyed Alan Frankl s adicle on low-scoring M Scrabble in the August 1981 issue. In it, Frank pre­ E A U sented a five-diamond on which no further tiles could be MAD I D played using words from the Official Scrabble Players U I T Dictiona ry. Jeff Grant note s that using Chambe rs D Twentieth Century Dictionary it is quite easy to break out of the diamond by pluralizing WUD (a Scots form of 1 weed I. He pro­poses the five-diamond at right as one that cannot be extended using either Chambers or the OSPD.

Richard Wiegmann of Omaha, Nebraska comments on 11 Telephomnemon­ics" in the May 1981 issue: ,. I first discovered this game a long time ago when our number at home was 4- 6243 (back in simpler times) -­then the phone company introduced unive r sal seven- digit numbe r sand ruined my image.'1 More l"ecently, he acqu ired a telephone numbe r that translates to RED SWAN, a sobriquet which appeals to him so much that he even had it put on his office coffe~ mug 1 Richard Ledere r of White Plains, New York heard on TV a used- car dealer begging people to sell him cars: dial CAR CASH. Leroy Meyers notes that 278-BEEP is Cent­ral Mobile Radio in Columbus, Ohio and 491- BEEP is Kentucky Commun­ications in Covington.

Philip Cohen wr ite s '1 The Wo rd Game cruise sounds like it was inspired by a Games fake ad for a Crossword C>:"uise ll . Charlie Bostick s.ays " The Caribbean Rally Cruise folded -- no takers. I suspect that the cost was prohibitive. 11

I

16

Owing to a misunder standing the a rticle on II Janeisms'l in the Novem­ber 1981 is sue should have been credited to the editor (who wrote the na r rative material based on information supplied in a lette r) ins tead of Leroy Meyers (who supplied the examples). In'l Websterian High­Scoring Scrabble 1' , revisited 1 on line 1 should be 1 revised' , and1

Move 22 of the Pocket Dictionary setup should be tug 1 , not' tag l •I

In II Diagonal Reversible Word Squares 11, I Nelia' should have been

I Neila , and in Kickshaws. the n at the beginning of line 9 in the Maori' place name should have been m.- Errare humanum est ...

In the August 1981 Colloquy, Dar ryl Francis noted that Jeff Grant found words for 121 of the 127 possible choices of one through seven letters of PIASTER, missing (among others) any word for t he combination PRST. This reminded Jack Grieshaber of an incident in 1921, when he met a Czech who taught him a phrase with four vowelless words: STRC PRST SKRZ KRK ( stick your finger down your throat). When he tried this out recently on Charles F. Pinzka, a University of Cincinnati professor. he was rewarded with a Czech palindrome: KOBYLA MA MAL Y BOK (the mayor has wide hips) .

In a lette r to Games magazine, Kyle Corbin presented five- step word ladders for four of Tom Pulliam's 11 Reversible Word Ladders l' in the May 1980 Word Ways: SPAT seat seas seps saps TAPS, FLOG flop glop goop goof GOLF, DUAL deal dead lead leud LAUD. and GNAT geat gent gant gang TANG. All words can be found in Webster l s Third.

Jeremy Morse is Sure that a search of other reputable dictionaries would fill in many of the gaps in II Hyphen- Straddling Bigrams" in the November Word Ways. A s a start, he oUe r s the following, culled from the OED and Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary:

To replace proper names: quasi-historical, anti-zealot, quiz-master To fill gaps: sub-question, anti-quartan, super-zealous, by-question,

laissez-aller, whizz-kid, quartz-lode, quartz-vein, buzz-wig

The evanescent nature of the hyphen is illustrated by the fact that Web­ster I s contains the words buzzwig, quizmaster, antizealot, antiquartan, subguestion, laissez aller, and whiz kid!

When Scot Mor r is, senior editor of Omni magazine, was reading back issue s of Wo rd Ways for ideas to be used in his February 1982 II Game s II column, he discovered Ma rtin Gardner 1 s Kickshaw item about Major Minor: Scot 1 s father-in-law, Floyd E. Minor, now retired, was at one time a major in the U.S. Army.

Philip Cohen notes that German constructs three-E words with as much facility as it does three-S words: TEEEI (tea-egg, tea-infuser) .

Boris Ra " Brand 1 teachers the ThgiE

Richard J Ways: a Road SUF of Novem Finally, ' BRIEFS.

Following 1979 issUl Webster I terword. certain re Torn Pulli s ist that a beheadmel ments or ( can be ext sheathe sb

Remember sorely gril Shelbyville

Le, Ret \v"}},

Y01.

The To Nov But

Webster IS

for words' up with JEl second spe. GOOSE is c

Elsewhere Phrase s of additions tc

n the Novem­no wrote the er) instead :te rian High­ed ' , and lot l tag l . laVe been l in the Maori

ff Grant found even lette r s of )ination PRST . en he met a

STRC PRST ~ tried this out professor,

viALY BOK

:- step word :Ie r s 1\ in the fLOG flop ld GNAT geat s Third.

tionar ie s would n the November :)m the OED

quiz-master , by-que stion, buzz- wig

,ct that Web­, antiquartan,

:ading back 1982 " Games ll

)out Major I, was at one

17

Boris Randolph asks what would have happened to the Nevele (in II Brand Name Palindromes" of November 1981) if the party of school teachers had been of some other size -- would we now have the Ruof, the Thgie or the Ev1ewt Hotel instead?

Richard Le dere r adds anothe r oxymo ron to the past collection in Wo rd Ways: a grocery store in White Plains, New York is called the Post Road SUPERETTE. Leroy Meyers clipped from the New York Times of November 22, 1981 an item by John Vincour on the PEACE WAR. Finally, Tim Wheeler notes that lawyers are prone to filing LENGTHY BRIE"FS.

"Following up on the editor ' s 11 Word Roots and Branches" in the August 1979 is sue, William Sunner s asks for the longe st word in the Me r r iam­Webster Pocket Dictionary for which a root extends down to a one-let ­te I." word. He proposes EMANCIPATOR importance cremation reaction certain retain train rant tan at a. Can Word Ways readers such as Torn Pulliam do better? To keep the challenge interesting, let's in­sist that all steps (except the final one) be letter rearrangements - - no beheadments, curtailments, or deletions. If only beheadments, curtail ­ments OT deletions are allowed, the be st Pocket Dictionary wo rd which can be extended down to a one-letter word i-s probably SHEATHED sheathe sheath heath heat eat at a.

Remember Stanley Payne I s May 1977 s ight- rhyme s (When at times I'm sorely griped I I take solace I was born a biped)? Tim Wheeler of Shelbyville, Indiana has corne up wi th two more of the se:

Lea rning to spell can be rough Remembering endings is tough "'Then you think you have learned quite enough You find that you're not really through

The fortnight past 111 ve sat at horne To read a massive work on Rome Now, I've seen many a weighty tome But this one was the epitome

Webster I S Second as well as the Oxford English Dictionary can be mined for words with specialized meanings. For starters, Philip Cohen carne up with JEFF: to throw ern quads as dice (pr inte r 1 s slang). That \ s the second special ized word to corne from the field of pr inting; WAY Z­GOO SE is apr inte r s 1 annual holiday 0 rente rt a inment.

Elsewhere in this issue, Richard Lederer presents" Trite as a Cliche!1with as much Phrases of this sort keep turning up, and he sent in two last-minuteuser) . additions to his collection: 1 tight as a tick' and I smooth as silk' .

18

A II Hair - it- is II update: the editor I s daughter Mar garet noted We I re Hair in Livingston, New Jersey; Mary Hazard found Shear Ego in Pitts­ford, New York; Tim Wheeler saw Ye Olde Head Shoppe and The Mane Event in Shelbyville, Indiana. He adds '1 I do find it interesting that we have 64 salons in a town of 15, 000. If there are two attendants per beauty salon, on average, it work~ out to one stylist for every 59 fe­male inhabitants ... Amazing. There isn't a single bookstore in Shelbyville. Guess that shows where our heads are at. II

Robe rt Klahn comments on II Cros swo rd Construction by Compute r" in August 1981: "Many prog rams which create cros sword puzzle answerS have been written. (Scrabble playing programs have been written also - ­I know of one which optimizes endplay for two- and three-letter words us ing the Official Scrabble Playe rs I wo rd list.) V~arious people prepared books of 4x4, 5x5, etc. word squares using the MWPD. Your que stion 1 How close are computers to producing crossword puzzles found in mag­azine sand newspape rs? I might be answe red 1 Apart (rom clue - construc­tion, it can be done any time anyone wants to I .•• Who wants to?"

Alan Frank has again broken the record for high- scoring subtr ansposals with no letters in COUlmon: PRECEPTOR and DILLYDALLY both have scores of 1,866,240, 000. (Two words are subtransposals if the products of their letter-values are equal, setting A::: 1, B::: 2, etc.)

Ed Wolpow recently found a new word to add to AIAIAI, sHEHEHEyanu and IOGOGOGue of 11 Internal Tautonyrr1s1\ in February 1980: the adject­ive mANANAN, referring to a Ulusic and arts festival held on the Isle of Man at the end of June (as advertised on a letter cancellation) .

Kyle Corbin noticed that biogeocoenology, a word cited by Darryl Francis in 11 Neologi sms Revisited" in November, is apparently a nine - syllable word of 15 letters (bi/o/ge/o/co/en/ol/o/gy) , one letter shorter than the previous record- holde r in the May 1981 Kickshaws.

In the February 1969 Word Ways, 11 The Multiple- Letter Wo rd Huntt l list ­ed the shortest words containin~ four of each letter of the alphabet. Alan FJ:"ank suggests that the lengthy IDGH- THOUGHTED can be replaced by HUSH-HUSH'; if hyphens are not allowed, how about THYMOLSULPHO­NEPHTHALEIN?

In the August 1978 Kickshaws William Sunners revealed that MAFIA is an acronym for Mode Ai "Francesi Italia Agogna (Death to the French l Italy lives!). The September 12, 1981 issue of the NY Post printed a slightly different phrase: Morte Ana "Francia ltalia Ancia (Death to the French is Italy! s Cry). Sunners 1 source asserts that the two sayings are really di­alectical variations on a common theme, one expressed in the Italian of the Romans, the othe r in the Italian of the Sicilians.

THE ~

PRINCE: Honolulu,

In the eral ultr:-a askin!5: w ers? Bel( ence in se can impro riam- Web

Plays (wi 3. syllabi 7. dor,en 11. vote 1 16. parel 21. faze 3 26. ten 4­31. em,m 36. es 2 syllabic, 1 Score and rack, the that the hi, scoring wi